9 English Grammar tricks for Competitive Exams - Part 1

English Grammar tricks : Just Read Once and Forget Never

NB: Dear Reader, If you are preparing for any PSC, UPSC or other entrances where english grammar is very essential, please take a note book and write down the following 9 tricks to not get fooled by the competitive exams.

Competitive exams is not just an exam which tests your knowledge, but also test how less you can be fooled

From this onwards, we will be posting tricks related to grammar and other tricks for competitive exams. Join our whatsapp group to get more updates. Don't forget to take notes and of those tricks we posts in coming days.

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The following rules will be helpful for candidates preparing for National Entrances, GATE, UGC NET, CSIR NET and for improving language during interviews

Rule 1: I and Me are not interchangeable.

I and me are used in different grammatical constructs. They are not interchangeable.  I is used in situations were it serves as the subject of a sentence. Me is a pronoun that acts as the object of a sentence. For example, the sentence ‘Ram and I went for a walk’ is correct. We cannot use me instead of I in this sentence. This is because both Ram and I are the subjects of the sentence. Me is used when someone else is performing the action. For examples, Ram took me for a walk. Here, Ram is the subject and me is the object.

Rule 2: Do not confuse ‘You’re’ and ‘Your’

Although You’re and Your sounds the same, they have two different meaning. Your is a possessive determiner that talks about something owned by you. For example,

1. Your lunch is getting cold.
2. Your friends are amazing.
3. You’re is a contraction of you are. For example,
4. You’re (You are) going to Chennai.
5. You’re (You are) known for your writing skills.

Rule 3: Question tags

Question tags are those short questions added to the end of a statements. They are used to turn a statement into a yes or no question. The rule for forming a question tag is a simple one: if the main verb of the sentence is positive, the question tag should take its negative form. If the main verb of the sentence is negative (has “not” in it), then the question tag should take its positive form. A question tag should always conform to the main verb of the sentence. For example,

1. She forgot her lunch, didn’t she?
2. She didn’t forget her lunch, did she?
3. If the main verb of the sentence is “I am,” the question tag that corresponds is “aren’t I.” For example, "I am going to have to change my schedule, aren’t I?

Rule 4: Rules for articles.

No articles should be used in a general way when the names of meals such as Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner / supper are mentioned. After di-transitive verbs like Elect/ Make / Appoint, no articles should be used Except they are used as mono transitive verbs. For example,

1. I had the breakfast at 9 o’clock in the morning. (wrong)
2. I had breakfast at 9 o’ clock. (right)
3. We appointed him a Director (wrong)
4. We appointed him Director. (right)

Rule 5: Rules for nouns

For the uncountable words, like luggage/ baggage/ furniture/ poetry, articles ‘A/An’ should be not be used before them. The words, such as News / Maths / Ethics / Politics, look like plural nouns but give singular meaning. Some nouns have the same form whether it is singular or plural e.g. Sheep / Deer/Fish / Apparatus. Few nouns are always used in the plural form only e.g. Cattle / People / Police.

Rule 6: Shortcuts for preposition and conjunction

Use ‘on’ with days of the week, ‘at’ for a particular place or while defining time, ‘in’ for year and month, and more. Prepositions usually go before a noun or a pronoun. A conjunction can never be used before a sentence which is in direct narration and also with an interrogative adverb or interrogative pronoun when the sentence is in indirect narration.

Rule 7: Shortcuts for synonyms and antonyms

Divide the word into suffix and prefix. Identify the meaning of the word and evaluate whether it has a positive or negative meaning. Separate the words from the choices based on their positive or negative meaning. If it is asked to find the meaning of the positive word, it will become much easier to relate the word with the available positive options. On the other hand, the case with antonyms is different. If it is requested or questioned to identify the contrary of a word that has a positive meaning, then its opposite will be one of the terms from the given possibilities, which has a negative meaning.

Rule 8: Shortcuts for adjectives

While comparing the objects, we should see that a noun is compared with another but not with some other word. In comparisons, the monosyllable words like “hot / easy / tall / small” should not be used with more / most. For example,

1. He is more taller than Raj. (wrong)
2. He is taller than Raj. (right)

Rule 9: Shortcut for adverbs

Before the word ‘Enough’ an adjective under positive form should be used. When we begin a sentence with ‘seldom / never / hardly / rarely / scarcely / barely / neither / never, the rule of inversion should be applied, an auxiliary verb is used before the subject. For example,

1. He is brilliant enough to follow you.
2. Hardly does he go to school.

Bookmark this page in your mobile home page, Read three times per week for two weeks and you will never forget this. Share to your friends who is poor in english and who can improve it.

Check out : Memory tricks for Competitive exams